January 14, 2013

There are different minds and different confusions, and perhaps each is unlike every other. That possibility is not excluded by the assertion that "There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind." All we know is that we are looking at the specific confusion that is the confusion of a simple mind, the unavoidable inference that Tom has a simple mind, and that the manifestation of this specific form of confusion feels like hot whips of panic.

This is our Gatsby sentence today. Do you identify with Tom? Do you panic when confused? Do you experience panic as hot whips? I think it's more likely that you don't identify with Tom. He's driving away from whatever is confusing him. (How about figuring things out, loser?) He's too simple to do anything but run and panic. And he's flogged absurdly by his own flaring inability to deal with anything at all challenging.

36 comments:

When some of these literary posts are way over my head, I most assuredly drive away before I can say something betraying how little I understand what's being discussed--because then I would suffer the hot whips of panic at having said something stupid.

"hot whips of panic" is terribly overwritten -- imagine that! Scott Fitzgerald overwriting! -- but the part about the confusion of the simple mind is astute. When simple or stupid people get overwhelmed by events, ideas, challenges, and yet feel, as Tom does, that they must be in control, it's a dangerous situation.

I just wanted to fill you all in...my dad died Friday morning due to complications from his cancers. Thanks for all the prayers and well wishing I recied from the althouse gang... they were appreciated.

Call your loved ones if they aren't with you and tell them you love them. If they are with you, why hte hell are you here? Go hug and kiss them.

Taking it out of context, there's nothing to indicate that Tom is among the we driving away. Tom could be sitting confused on the front porch watching the "we" drive away for all the sentence alone indicates.

Once again our narrator shows his contempt for those he considers beneath him i.e., that Gatsby fellow and now for Tom.

Here's where the narrator is myopic. The cause of confusion may be uncomplicated, but the state of confusion itself is identical regardless of the intelligence of the one experiencing it. Emotion is neither simple or complex, it's raw and undifferentiated. Hence it's the situation itself that determines the state and extent of the confusion not intelligence. In fact, the more intelligent one is the more ability to comprehend one's situation (unless it is immediately life-threatening when intelligence is irrelevant). Without knowing the situation, I can only conclude that the narrator has it exactly backward. There is no confusion like that of a complex mind. Once again our narrator has demonstrated his unreliability. Also, confusion does not necessarily lead to panic but rather panic necessarily leads to confusion. I am beginning to assume our narrator is always drunk when he utters these statements. Or badly hungover. Or crazy like his eff'n wife.

As for the inappropriate metaphor of hot whips for panic, I think our narrator has unintentionally revealed his own sado-masochistic streak. There is nothing as likely to focus the mind as the feeling of hot whips. Rage would most certainly ensue even if it were bound up with pathetic whimpering.

On the other hand, panic is like spinning underwater in a strait jacket, where up down and left or right have no meaning whatsoever. Panic is utter helplessness with nowhere to turn. Until you slap yourself with hot whips and snap out of it.

I'll take a stab at this. Driving away in confusion can be better than some alternatives. It's frankly an arrogance of the human mind that there is nothing we can't find in nature, that if only we understand its nature, it will be tame and under a law-like control.

As a very simple example of this, researchers in Norway wanted to publish how they had taken the H1N1 flu and converted it to a form easily transmitted between humans. Never mind that such a flu would cause a worldwide flu pandemic like we humans haven't seen since the WWI outbreak. And even the purported goal, to come up with quicker flu vaccines could easily work against the entire stupid idea of publishing. As in, the elect could generate a vaccine (for the elect), and then publish their results.

Sometimes it is best to NOT embrace understanding, sophistication, and knowledge; after all, it's killing Western Civilization.

Understanding is not a cure all. Nor is sophistication, which I will equate with fakers, those who think they have good abstract analytical skills, but deep down know they do not. I have no deeper disdain than for glib wordy hypocrite fakers who profess to understand everything.

Sometimes recognizing confusion and running from it, like running from publishing an article on how to make a killer flu, is the right thing to do. Get a safe distance away, then understand it. And if Fitzgerald is saying anything else, he needs to re-read "The Death of Ivan Ilyich," which I hope we all recall when thinking about the Liverpool protocol as a necessary extension of Obama Care, which is a logical extension of our screwed up anti-family society.

Meanwhile, on a lighter note, I did something that I normally do not do. That is, I learned a new word Contralto, as a part of the Gatsby series, and applied it to my everyday life. I was reading up about Tolkein's various invented Elvish Languages, and enjoying the melancholic way Enya sang both Quenyan and Sindarin in the fellowship, and recalled a song that made me feel that way.

The song is composed by Lisa Gerrard in her own language that she began inventing since she was twelve. According to Wikipedia, she is a Contralto.

Here she is, in Milan, singing in her own language, her own song, looking beautiful and statuesque Now we are free, which some may recognize as from Gladiator. And it sounds every bit as good.

For those who did not know a Contralto, now you do. Listen to the way she brings her voice down, precisely at the moment you expect it to go up, and the warmth that pervades.

Without knowing it was from Gatsby this line could easily be taken from some hard-boiled pulp novel (back to Spillane?)

"There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind, and as we drove away Tom was feeling the hot whips of panic. I had grown tired of Tom and his mewling ways: one hand on the wheel, I slapped him sharply with my other gloved hand.

'Tom, if you can't be a man then at least be a QUIET little girl and hold my purse."

Tom's lips moved like weak fish but no words came out, just a defeated mumble. He could feel the warmth of the just-fired gun even through the leather of the purse.

It's a hard life, being a dame in a world of weak men, but you do what has to be done. I wiped the remaining drops of blood from my stockings and headed for downtown, to see the last man who had ever pulled my fire-red hair and lived to see the morning; Tom would have to wait in the car..."

This is a great sentence. The first part works so hard to draw one into feeling companionable with the narrator's condescending judgment about the way that people with simple minds get confused...people who are not like those of us reading the sentence, who presumably do not have simple minds.

And then boom, we find out that the way that people with simple minds react to confusion is by feeling "the hot whips of panic" and at least some of us then think, "Well, wait. That's how I react."

And then you're confused about whether this sentence is inviting you to condescendingly contemplate the way it is for simple minds when they are confused, or whether you're one of those simple minds yourself. Which puts you where in regard to this sentence?